Introduction

Between December 1941 and March 1942, the Canadian Federal Government passed numerous Orders in Council that reduced the freedom of Japanese Candians to live on the Pacific coast. These included orders that required registration with the RCMP, the assertion of control over Japanese Canadian owned or operated vessels, and the establishment of a restricted zone from which individuals who were viewed as “enemy aliens” could be forcibly removed and dispossessed. These orders led to the forced dispersal of approximately 22,000 Japanese Canadians from British Columbia, who were given very limited options for where they could go, especially if they wanted to remain together as a family.

Regardless of where exactly they ended up, the life that Japanese Canadians had to lead in their forced dispersal was not easy. Stripped of the possessions and capital they had earned in B.C., families were forced to do extensive manual labour for little pay, often meaning that children, too, had to sacrifice their education and the ability to know a childhood without work in order to survive.

This exhibit focuses on a selection of letters written by young Japanese Canadians that describe the childhoods they were able to have. It details their deep homesickness and sense of isolation from their friends and communities, the new living and labour conditions they had to endure, their continued sense of Canadian identity even as the government labeled them “alien,” the bright spots they were able to find in their present conditions, and their imaginations for the future.